W.H. seeks $17B in cuts in 2010 budget

The 2010 budget fight begins in earnest Thursday when the White House rolls out its detailed spending requests together with up to $17 billion in savings from terminating or severely cutting 121 programs — many long defended by interests in Congress.

“None of this is going to be easy,” said an administration official briefing reporters Wednesday night. And to stay within its budget, Congress will have to go a big step further by cutting an additional $10 billion in reductions from President Barack Obama’s appropriations requests.

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Trying to save its thunder for Thursday, the administration was coy about disclosing details. Easy targets cited by the White House include an Education Department attaché in France, costing about $632,000 a year, or a $1 million-a-year Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation.

But Wyoming senators will be up in arms if they lose an estimated $116 million—their state’s share of about $142 million in savings from changes in the federal abandoned mine payments impacting Western coal states.

The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, now about $400 million a year, would be terminated — provoking an almost certain fight with the powerful California delegation. And close to half the $17 billion is dependent on Defense Secretary Robert Gates navigating first through a set of difficult fights over terminating weapons systems.

Altogether, about $11.5 billion of these savings would be achieved through the dozen annual appropriations bills slated to move through the House and Senate this summer. And as already estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, the administration will be seeking an estimated $1.096 trillion in new spending for defense and domestic programs, as well as foreign aid.

On top of this, the White House also wants $130 billion to continue U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this context, $11.5 billion in savings amounts to less than 1 percent of the president’s requests.

But for Obama, the symbolism is important as a first step toward greater efficiency in government. “It's not the end of the process” one official said. “We will continue to look for additional savings and I know that congressional committees are also. So you have not heard everything that is to be said on this topic from us as we roll into — as we have a full year.”

About two-thirds of the programs are relatively new to the chopping block, and appear to include advanced payments for the Earned Income Tax Credit program. While Republicans have gone after the Even Start early schooling program in the past, the dynamic will be different when a Democratic White House argues that the program is no longer needed, given new investments in Head Start, for example.

“We're interested in measuring programs by their outcomes, not by their intentions,” an administration official said. “There are a lot of programs that are implemented with the best of intentions; not all of them are effective. And we can't afford to carry programs that are ineffective.”

Democrats have the added challenge of not only sorting through the $11.5 billion in Obama cuts but coming up with $10 billion of their own.